the star-winds laden with funghi of yuggoth

''dear a.w.:--what you say of the fascination of autumn is very true--and i have always felt it despite the menace of physical discomfort it brings ... the woods, the fields, the hillside orchards laden with fruit, the fields of sheaved corn, the old stone walls overgrown with flaming vines, ... at this second i am sitting on an old new england stone wall under an ancient elm, with a squirrel chattering nearby and a lovely profusion of poison ivy [to which i am oddly immune despite a cuticular hypersensitiveness in other directions] climbing among the mossy rocks. ... it has been this way for 250 years--and may the gods keep it so [by virtue of ownership by large, conservative institutions] as many more.''

h.p.lovecraft, selected letters--iii. arkham house.

 

 

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lovecraft's prose-poesy

aklo musics c-d, beyond madness, including the classic nyarlathotep.

''screamingly sentient, dumbly delirious, only the gods that were can tell.

''a sickened, sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are not hands, and whirled blilndly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation, corpses of dead worlds with sores that were cities, charnel winds that brush the pallid stars and make them flicker low.

''beyond the worlds vague ghosts of monstrous things; half-seen columns of unsanctified temples that rest on nameless rocks beneath space and reach up to dizzy vacua above the spheres of light and darkness.

''and through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening beating of drums , and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time; the detestable pounding and piping  whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods--the blind, voicless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is nyarlathotep.''

h.p.lovecraft, nyarlathotep.

chapter on prose-poesy in the wikinomicon.

lovecraft's orthography

''it happened on a summer's holiday that past a mad-house gate i took my way. within the bedlam was a sage confin'd who from too much study lost his mind. now strolling out, in watchful keeper's care, with childish sounds the madman fill'd the air. still dreaming of his letter'd days of yore, his ravings on remember'd subjects bore; dim came the thoughts of what he us'd to teach, and he began to curse our english speech.

"aha!" quoth he, "the men that made our tongue were arrant rogues, and i shall have them hung. for long establish'd custom what care have we? come, let us tear down etymology. let spelling fly, and naught but sound remain; the world is mad, and i alone am sane!"

''thus rav'd the sage; inventing, as he walk'd, a hundred ways to spell our words as talk'd. he simplify'd until his fancy bred a system quite as simple as his head. in scholarship disasterous change he wrought, and alter'd as he went, for want of thought.''

h.p.lovecraft, the simple speller's tale.

winter's soul

''ye winter gusts that round my casement blow and pile in drifts the palid demon snow; ye cruel frosts, that numb with poison breath a suff'ring world, and serve the will of death! grant me, ye gods , a dome of crystal glass, through whose clear surface sun and stars might blaze, ...

''here let me dwell, and in december sing midst balmy zephyrs of eternal spring! ... through mossy meads a limped stream might run, ... a floral train the rolling green might bear, ... unusual flow'rs the well plac'd urns might fill, ... here might the studious mind at ease expand, nor fear the woes that fret a wintery land. ...

''but see--alas--the pleasing picture fades--and icy field displaces the vernal shades! yet when indeed does life reward or please with truer things than visions such a these? our struggling years too little bliss could own were they confin'd to genuine joys alone! ... though changing seasons o'er the mead may roll, spring reigns perpetual in the smiling soul!''

h.p.lovecraft, a winters wish.

night of the night-gaunts

dear miss bonner:--
4th may 1936
the garden house
1, ely's court
providence plantation

''no--we are never scarred of the dark now, though we used to be prior to 1895 or'96. our grandfather cured us of the tendancy by daring us [when our years numbered approximately five] to walk through certain chains of dark rooms in the fairly capacious old home at 454 angell.

''little by little our hardihood increased--and by the time we graduated from the fully-inhabited 2nd floor to the merely servant--and--store--and--guest--room occupied 3rd floor, we were reasonably hard-boiled so far as the amorphous entities of shadow were concerned.

''actual nightmares though, were another story, we still have one or two per year--though even the worst is pallid beside the real 1896 product. i invented the name of night-gaunts for the things i dreamed of in 96 and 97.''

yr. most oblig'd and obt. servt,
h.p.lovecraft 3rd asst under-secy--k.a.t.

h.p.lovecraft, selected letters.

starry vision

''once i watch’d with restless yearning an alluring, aureate star; ... mystic waves of beauty blended with the gorgeous golden rays; ... there (thought i) lies scenes of pleasure, where the free and blessed dwell, ... there (i told myself) were shining worlds of happiness unknown, ... thus i mus’d, when o’er the vision crept a red delirious change; ... crimson burn’d the star of sadness as behind the beams i peer’d; ... now i know the fiendish fable that the golden glitter bore; now i shun the spangled sable that i watch’d and lov’d before; but the horror, set and stable, haunts my soul for evermore.''

complete poem.

h.p.lovecraft, astrophobos.

fragment

''naturally we cannot expect all weird tales to conform absolutely to any theoretical model. creative minds are uneven and the best of fabrics have their dull spots... moreover, much of the choicest weird work is unconscious; appearing in memorable fragments scattered through material whose massed effect may be of a very different cast... therefore we must judge a weird tale... by the emotional level which it attains at its least mundane point... if the proper sensations are excited, such a "high spot" must be admited on its own merits as weird literature,''

h.p.lovecraft, super natural horror in literature.


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[toronto courtyard.]

''where courts of this kind are found close to each other in the city, they suggest an inward, closed world seperated from the street. one begins to get a reading of a neutral exterior urban space, left empty for the benifit of vehicles and representing some kind of stiff, formal public behavior, while behind the walls of the courts lurk all the forbidden temptations to act privately and freely...''

polyzoides stefano, etal; courtyard housing in los angeles: a typological analysis.

moule&polyzoides: architects and urbanists.

eternal ruins

how dost thou lie, o rome, neath the foot of the teuton slaves are thy men, and bent to the will of thy conqueror. whither hath gone, great city, the race that gave law to all nations, subdu'd the east and the west, and made them bow down to thy consuls, knew not defeat, but gave it to all who attack'd thee?

roma enjoy'd.

dead! and replac'd by these wretches who cower in confusion. dead! they who gave us this empire to guard and to live in, rome, thou didst fall from thy pow'r with the proud race that made thee, and we, base italians, enjoy'd what we could not have builded.

h.p.lovecraft, on the ruin of rome.

nemesis

''thro' the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber, i have liv'd o'er my lives without number ... i have whirl'd with the earth at the dawning' i have seen the dark universe yawning ... i had drifted o'er seas without ending' under sinister grey-clouded skies ... i have plung'd like a deer thro the arches of the hoary primordial grove ... i have stumbled by cave ridden mountains, that rise barren and bleak from the plain ... i have scanned the vast ivy-clad palace, i have trod its untenanted hall ... i have peer'd from the casement in wonder, at the mouldering meadows around ... i have haunted the tombs of the ages, i have flown on the pinions of fear ... i was old when the pharaohs first mounted, the jewel deck'd throne by the nile ... oh, great was the sin of my spirit and great is the reach of its doom; ... thro' the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber i have liv'd o'er my lives without number, and i struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.''

h.p.lovecraft, nemesis.

boreal charm

''slumber watcher till the spheres six and twenty thousand years have revolv'd and i return to the spot where now i burn. other stars anon shall rise to the axis of the skies; stars that soothe and stars that bless with sweet forgetfulness: only when my round is o'er shall the past disturb thy door.''

h.p.lovecraft, polaris.